Competition
by Terapsina
Summary: It's just so ironic. Almost getting killed because one of Gotham's supervillains thinks that Kate might care more about Mary than she does about them. When most days she's not entirely sure Kate even remembers her name. Or that she exists. /or/ Mary's POV shortly before Kate shows up at the clinic the day after Mary was attacked by Alice's lackey.


**Disclaimer**: Not mine.

**AN**: I actually wrote this and two other fics for this fandom quite a while back but at the time there wasn't a category for them yet so I only posed it on AO3. But I noticed it's here now so I thought I might as well post it now.

*o0O0o*  
***Competition***  
*o0O0o*

_"Alice doesn't like competition."_

Those words echo through Mary's mind in an obnoxious loop that just doesn't want to shut up despite Mary's every attempt to drown it out with the upbeat sounds of the pop song coming to her through one of her earbuds. The other one she lets hang loose in front of her, she can't quite manage to make herself put it in her other ear and so be completely deaf to any other visitors Kate's crazy sister might send after her.

She's sweeping the floor, trying to get her illegal clinic back to some semblance of clean after the attack from last night, and currently that means sweeping up the wooden remains of what used to be an actual door, instead of a safety hazard made of splinters. She shudders at remembering the sound of that psycho's ax slamming into the water damaged wood that was the only thing protecting her from being chopped into tiny itty bloody pieces.

_"Alice doesn't like competition."_

She inhales a stuttering little breath, pushes back the urge to fall back into yesterday's hysterical sobs and continues working. The broom clangs loudly against the floor under her suddenly more violent movements.

It's just so ironic. Almost getting killed because one of Gotham's supervillains thinks that Kate might care more about Mary than she does about them. When most days she's not entirely sure Kate even remembers her name. Or that she exists.

She's the last person on the planet Alice- Beth? Is she supposed to call her Beth now? Ugh, whatever - she's the last person on the_ planet _Kate's long lost sister should worry about.

She's not a threat to whatever sisterly reunions and movie-worthy bonding montages are in the works.

_"Alice doesn't like competition."_

Mary isn't competition. She doesn't want to be competition, especially when being viewed as one apparently merits ax murderers who completely mess up her perfectly nice, slightly mold infested, underground medical clinics.

She just wishes that one of these days it would stop hurting.

Because okay, yeah, there was a time when Mary wanted Kate to be her sister more than anything else, even more than for Leonardo DiCaprio to show up at her birthday party to profess his undying love. Either one was as likely to happen as the other though.

Because Kate Kane would only ever look through her like she wasn't even there. And yes, she took a psychology semester, she's not an idiot, she understands how the trauma of losing a twin at thirteen would have affected the sudden entrance of a step-sibling.

But… well she'd been a kid and Kate was the coolest girl Mary had ever met and she was supposed to have become her _sister_. Mary had always wanted a sister.

But Kate had already had a sister. She hadn't wanted another one, she'd wanted to get her old one back.

The twenty-five year old Mary gets it. The fourteen year old Mary deep in her chest remembers every time Kate rolled her eyes at her and left the room without bothering to even open her mouth. That Mary just wants Kate to love _her_ too.

That Mary never really left. She grew up - though her mother doesn't seem to think so - but she didn't vanish into thin air.

Not that it matters. She doesn't carry any illusions here, the Kate that's come back to Gotham might be a lot nicer to her than the one who left but she's no more likely to want Mary to be her sister now than she did more than a decade ago, when they got introduced over the world's most awkward dinner.

Especially now that she's actually managed to_ find _Beth.

_"Alice doesn't like competition."_

Alice has nothing to worry about, Mary exited that particular fighting ring a long time ago.

She wipes away a stray tear from her cheek and pretends it's over yesterdays near brush with death.

Then she takes a deep breath, takes out the earbud from her ear - not like it was helping anyway, - and gets back to the work at hand. Her clinic won't clean up itself and even the sort of patients she caters to won't want to sleep on a bed of wood dust and splinters.

*o0O0o*

**AN2**: Mary is my favorite character and apparently I needed to get into her head as soon as the episode ended. Anyone else absolutely INVESTED in Mary and Kate developing a real sisterly bond? Not that that's what I did here, no, this was more me trying to figure out their currently broken relationship because honestly it is FASCINATING.

Hope you liked it. And that I made you tear up a bit.


End file.
